autism is a journey: How you can tell when:

Saturday, October 27, 2007

How you can tell when:

you've pushed your son too far:

he stims on one phrase over and over
he returns to a previous stim phrases
he easily frustrates/cries/lashes out
he repeatedly asks for something he knows he cannot have
he does all of the above

"All of the above" would describe Jackson tonight. Today, Dan took him to Science Central (local kids science museum), Wal-Mart for groceries, Home Depot for paint then out to dinner at Chik-Fil-A. Maybe it was just a bit too much for him.

BUT, we all know what it's like to have "just one more thing" to get down. Sometimes in ASD land, one more thing is just enough to push a kid over the edge.

hmmmm....I hope he's sleeping now......

No comments:

Post a Comment

from "Metaphor-the puzzle piece symbol"

Ever had one of those "ah-ha" moments? I'm driving down the road today, pondering Jackson's recent successes--boyscout camp and football camp. It occurred to me that each experience gave me back a piece of Jackson. [I'm not doing a very good job explaining this...] When we learned about Jackson's diagnosis, so many dreams were snuffed out. We no longer thought about our son becoming an athlete, a scholar, or even a friend. We thought in much smaller terms:"how many words does he have?""did he learn a new sign""is he reaching out to us?""that's playing pretend, isn't it?"Our perspective as parents permanently changed. It's like we had this complete picture of our child and autism fractured it--into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.Each day little by little, we get pieces of the puzzle back. It'll never be complete, never the same as we expected, but there will be parts that will come together.Like when he participated in the school music program, enjoyed boyscout camp, rode the roller coaster and attended football camp. Bit by bit, we get pieces of what we expected back.Of course, the flip side of this is all the joys we gain from Jackson that we never expected in spite of the autism, but that's another post my friends....